Thursday, April 28, 2011

And then I said: "Where am I, what's that smell, and where are my pants?" Because it had been one of those nights.

Once I had those matters squared away, I was pretty committed to the whole re-imagining thing, and lucky for me there were some others guys who had already laid the groundwork and I was able to piggyback off of them pretty much without trying.

But the problem with re-imagining is, how do you know when you're done? It's not like there's a gauge you can check (believe me, I looked). You need some sort of independent verification, possibly from a local publication with an eye for pop culture trends, before you can be completely certain.

Enter Cory Hill, of the East Bay Express! That's it folks, the fourth estate has called it in our favor: re-imagination, complete. This calls for a celebration! You know how we celebrate around here? Well, that thing about my missing pants ought to give you some idea, but barring that, we usually do it by taping a show.

Which is why it's so lucky that we already have one scheduled! I know, you'd almost think we planned it this way. So please, join us LIVE, SATURDAY, APRIL 3Oth, 3:30 pm, at the BOXCAR THEATER STUDIOS, 125A HYDE STREET!

And don't think we're stopping there. Step two: re-re-imagination! The key is to remember that late night is actually very early morning, and if you wait long enough, late night TV becomes morning-after TV, in all of its awkward, shameful, hungover glory. Oh yes, I can smell it now...

Friday, April 22, 2011

It's true that we are now just a little over a week away from the fifth episode of The Variety Society, but PLEASE, try to contain yourselves! The last thing we need is for your frenzied enthusiasm to boil over into a blood-red tide of civil violence that will sweep through the entire city.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT incite any riots on our behalf, no matter how much the publicity would ultimately benefit us. It's just not worth it for you or those around you. It would be totally worth it for us, but we wouldn't put our success above the public's safety. Although, if you were to put our success above the public's safety, we couldn't stop you. Just saying.

Instead, let us speak of Blake Schaefer, to calm your nerves and help suppress the urge to raise our show's profile via fire-lit reveling in the streets. Who is Blake Schaefer? At first you might think that he was an ill-conceived, barber-themed supervillain from John Byrne's Superman run, but you're thinking of Black Shaver. No, Blake Schaefer is our scheduled musical guest for next week.

Why did we go with Schaefer? To answer that question, you need only look at the cover art from his latest album:

Folks, your eyes are not playing tricks on you: That is a rabbit, jumping into the air, amidst a shower of gold-plated (solid gold?) guns. It's the cover of Blake Schaefer's "Between Two Worlds". Those two worlds being, apparently, the world of jumping rabbits and the world of golden guns.

I ask you, what does this mean? I ask you and you don't know. Because you're not responsible for it. As we all know, Christopher Lee was the Man With the Golden Gun, the Solex Agitator, which would have brought the world to its knees if not for the intervention of 007. But Roger Moore is not here to save us now.

How did this rabbit (or hare? I can't really tell) come into possession of the device? What did Christopher Lee have to do with it? Why did the studio stick with Roger Moore for so long? I want answers, damn it! And Blake Schaefer is the only man who can give them.

We will fully debrief Mr. Schaefer LIVE, SATURDAY, APRIL 30th, 3:30 PM, at the BOXCAR THEATRE STUDIOS, 125A HYDE STREET! In the meantime, please continue not rioting. But if you MUST riot, try to do it in one of our t-shirts. Because as George HW Bush said after he threw up on the Japanese Prime Minister, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Friday, April 1, 2011

I'm here to do three things: make a statement, ask a question, and eat jujubes. And I'm all out of jujubes.

I'm pretty sure I screwed up that one-liner...although upon closer inspection, it was actually a two-liner anyway. Someone get John Carpenter on the phone, he has some explaining to do.

In any case, the first order of business is to make sure everyone knows that our next show will be taping April 30th, and I'm so excited about it that I'm going to medicate myself into a four week-long coma just so I can sleep through the wait time. Updates may be sporadic.

But enough about us, let's talk about you. Yes, you. I have a question for our readers, viewers, and ostensible supporters:

Just who in the hell are you people anyway?

No, really, WHO are you? Here you are, reading my words, watching our show, from which you can extrapolate all sorts of things about us. But we don't know a thing about you. You're anonymous, like the voice on the other end of the line in a horror movie. Except when that voice is Matthew Lillard, then it's really, really obvious.

But wait, on second thought, I actually have reams of information about all of you! That's right, welcome to the internet, please allow me to direct your attention to this graphic:

So, according to this, 89% of you are Americans. Whoo, go USA! But we have friends abroad too (and I'm not just talking about you, Moammar; you hang in there buddy); we have hits recorded from Russia, Canada, the UK, Ireland (hi Stephen!), and...Malaysia? The hell?

Who do we know in Malaysia? Seriously, there's a lot of Malaysian traffic here. More than the UK, Germany, China, and India combined. If this were the Olympics, Malaysia would be our Bronze Medalist (well, Russia is actually in third, but I assume they paid off the judges). Not that we're complaining mind you. We salute our anomalously large Malaysian following, howsoever one appropriately salutes in that part of the world.

I also see that half of you are Firefox users, but six percent of you are reading this via Chrome. You poor, brave, crazy sons of bitches. Four percent of you are using Linux, but from what I've seen of hardcore Linux users, it wouldn't surprise me if this was just one guy with 77 simultaneously running systems.

The biggest attraction here on the blog concerned our team-up with Berkeley Raw, but the second most viewed update is STILL me calling David Blatter a witch. That guy must fucking love me by now. Seriously Dave, come back sometime, you were awesome.

Our second most popular video of all time is Dan interviewing "Alan Wake" star Ilkka Villi, although I would assume that many of these hits come from people who are imprisoned in the dark dimension where only Wake-related media can cross the threshold into their realm, which understandably limits their YouTube consumption.

But our most popular video by far is still Todd Shipley's musical performance. Yeah, you guys really, really love Todd, he's got twice as many views as Ilkka and almost three times as many as anyone else. Seriously, what's the deal? Aren't the rest of us good enough for you, or does it have to be all Todd, all the time?

I mean, sure, so maybe none of the rest of us have that velvety twang to their voice, and maybe we can't do things with a guitar that make it safe to assume that butter wouldn't melt on our fingers, and granted, none of us look half that manly in the red checked flannel, and sure, when he smiles his eyes crinkle up like that and you just kind of...get...a little, um, light headed and...yeah....